Most Ballbashers would have looked out of their bedroom window this morning, observed the twinkling frost on the garden, fetched a cup of tea from the TeasMade and got back into bed to study the Racing Post or whatever takes their morning fancy.
Not so the five intrepid golfers – Mike S, John T, Bill, Stuart and myself who gathered at Temple to play the last game in the Autumn League. Missing was Rob A, the leader as we stood there. He had decided that it would be kinder for the rest of us if he did not appear with his cold and headache. With those symptoms we would probably have voted for the same decision on his part.
Mike had to win on the day to overtake Rob by a single point – if he could halve the match then he and Rob would tie for the Autumn League title. So, by not being present, Rob was leaving everything to chance.
We had established on the putting green that, if you gave the ball a hearty wack, it would speed across the green before suddenly putting down the anchors and grinding to a dead halt coated with frost. We were totally unclear what would happen with the ball down the frosty fairways.
One thing was sure and that was that we needed to play with a coloured ball. In the front 2-ball of Bill and JohnT, Bill had decided to use a white ball probably on the basis that he normally does not have too great a clue as to which direction his ball was going in anyway. He proceeded to lose this ball somewhere in the middle of the 2nd fairway and his team-mate, John, took pity on him and lent him a yellow ball, at which point he started to fly.
Mike had disappeared into the Pro-Shop and emerged with a dozen yellow balls – he obviously thinks that this weather is here to stay!. Stuart dug around in his bag and produced a strange orangey ball – possibly off a pool table somewhere. And I found a bright pink Volvik ball, which while not very good for my image unless I bumped into a golfer of LGBTQ+ persuasion, it did seem to like the putting surface. The most off-putting part of a Volvik is that it sounds like a lump of concrete coming off the clubface but beggars cannot be choosers and off we went.
Mike and I surprised ourselves by par’ring the 1st hole while Stuart should have done so but missed the first of his 6 or 7 make-able putts that were to emerge during his round. I discovered that my fingers were so cold that it did n’t matter that I was hitting a lump of concrete and, with the added discovery that, if I raised the toe of the putter about 10 degrees, most of the putts fell into the hole, I trundled round quite happily and even scored a birdie on the 8th for4 points while Mike scored a 4 for 2. This was important because we tied the front 9 with 19 points each while Stuart had 15. Up ahead of us Bill had scored 22 but we were not to know that.
At this stage the fairways were still covered in frost but it was at least 1 degree warmer and we happily continued. Battle was really joined and after 5 holes Mike and I were still tied on 29 points each. Rob’s victory in the League hung in the balance. By this point Stuart had switched to a white ball and if only he had n’t left another 6 putts on the brink of the hole or 1 foot away, he would have been contending as well. He was also unfortunately put off slightly on the 16th tee by a discussion we had embarked on about the nature of infinity and the dawn of the universe (we were slightly scraping around for conversational topics by then!)- his ball very definitely did not help us explore this issue any further unless infinity actually and surprisingly = 10 yards..
As the battle unfolded I par’red the 15th and 16th to go 2 shots up on Mike and then we halved the remaining 2 holes with 2 points on each one, and thereby I ended up with 41 to Mike’s 39. Up ahead Bill had not been able to repeat his front 9 performance and finished with 35 points, followed by Stuart on 33 and JohnT, whose left-hand grip was not helped at all by the cold, coming in with 26.
So, despite not being present, Rob won the Autumn League with 22 points to Mike’s 21.5 – a very close finish indeed.
The team scores were Bill and JohnT = 24 + 17 = 41 and Mike/Stuart/me 25 + 23 = 48.
We finished with some excellent and very-warming root soup in the clubhouse and departed wishing Merry Xmas to each other and absent friends.
